The Adolescence Familiarity
by Taun-Taun
Summary: Sheldon knew her. Her name was Arnez. "Like Dezi," she had said. He knew her birthday, her eye color, her favorite comic. He could remember calculating her IQ. But she didn't seem to remember him. Sheldon/OC
1. The Torture Emancipation

Arnez had only lived in Galveston, Texas for a month and she already despised everything it encompassed. She was 10, a native of Las Vegas, Nevada, and had a mind "like an old woman" as her mother said on multiple occasions. To Arnez, Galveston seemed to be chock full of irritating, religiously intolerant, bourgeois hicks who were much too busy concerning themselves with football and the word of the lord to consider the world outside of the island.

She believed there were no kids like her in all of Texas; kids who liked to read and listen to music like The Smiths. Her friends in Vegas, Nora and Charles, thought her glasses looked really cool, like Garth from the Wayne's World sketch on Saturday Night Live. But their reception in Galveston wasn't quite as heartwarming. Her classmates called her Coke Bottles and "Smarmy Arnie". The latter was a mystery to Arnez. Her name wasn't Arnie, nor did it rhyme with smarmy. She didn't think they quite understood the definition of smarmy either, which was excessively flattering or serville. After having read the dictionary, Arnez came to the conclusion that they actually meant something closer to haughty, meaning arrogant or superior. Of course, Arnez didn't believe she was any of these things. But if she were to tease a quiet, bespectacled girl with hair like Courtney Love, and who spent her lunch time reading comics instead of troughing two hamburgers, chocolate milk, and a can of Surge like the other students, she would probably use a word like haughty.

But she didn't have to worry about daily remarks from them. It was late June and Arnez usually didn't have to leave her room unless it was absolutely imperative. She listened to cassettes of The Cure and read Anne Rice novels. She called Nora and Charles at two in the morning - midnight in Vegas. She wasn't allowed to make three-way phone calls, especially not long distance ones, so she waited until she knew her parents and their parents would all be asleep. But keeping track of six sleeping adults proved to be tough every night. Their conversations were regularly perforated by silence while they listened for someone's parent to go back to bed.

However, this summer was different. Despite her wish for a CD player, Arnez's parents bought her a fixed speed bike for her last birthday months before, giving her no reason not to go outside, or not to run their errands while they were busy. Instead of hours of The Vampire Lestat by candlelight, Arnez was sent into ninety degree heat on a bicycle everyday with orders to fetch milk from the corner deli, or stamps from the post office. Her slight frame became toned from the effort used to pedal and her pale skin darkened to a healthy tan, contrasting against her bleached hair. Light brown freckles peppered her nose and she came to the annoying realization that the neighborhood children would find that a reason to pick on her even more.

"Speak of the devil," she whipered as she saw four boys off in the distance. She stopped at the curb, waiting for a car to pass so she could cross the street safely to the other side, hopefully avoiding the potential taunts they would throw her way.

"What's the matter, Smelly Shelly?" she heard.

"Idiot!"

She looked at the boys, finding one of them had been pushed to the ground and the other three were kicking him. Arnez instictively dropped her bike and ran to the group. She used the momentum she built up to push one of the boys down, but as she looked at the other two who still stood, she remembered that she didn't know exactly how to defend herself in a physical duel. Understanding the repurcussions that were to come if she pleaded forgiveness at that moment, she decided to pretend she knew what she was doing, holding her balled hands in front of her face and glaring at the boys.

"Knock it off or I'll…" She thought of what she'd do. "I'll kick you right in the gems, without a moment's hesitation."

"Whatever," one of the boys said. "Move it, little girl. We're busy."

He put his hand on Arnez's shoulder and shoved her away, stepping towards the boy on the gournd. She cocked her right leg back and swung it forward between the boy's legs, hitting her target right on. The boy turned loose a high-pitched scream that scratched at her ears as he fell to the ground, his hands tucked into his crotch.

"Jesus!" one exclaimed. The two bullies helped him up off the ground.

"Smelly Shelly needs a girl to fight for him," the one she had pushed sneered, spitting on "Smelly Shelly"'s shirt as they dragged away the wounded one.

Said bully still demeaned "Smelly Shelly" through his pain as if he were being paid by the comment.

"Shelly Cooper is a-" He gagged. "A smelly pooper!"

Arnez stooped beside the boy as he cried.

"Hey," she said. "Stop crying." It was a command, not a coo. "They're gone."

The boy sat up and wiped his wet face with a thin, lanky arm. The bully's spittle had set itself into his shirt, and below it was a brown patch of what seemed to be dog shit.

"You have, uh…" Arnez tried, pointing to his striped shirt. "A little… Excrement."

He followed her finger to his shirt and his blue eyes became wide, the left side of his face twitching beyond his control.

"Oh dear lord!" he shouted, pulling the shirt off of his skinny body and throwing it away from himself. He didn't have an undershirt, and even in the humid weather, Arnez had a feeling that being shirtless outside would only bring him more trouble from other children. She looked down at her shirt. She knew she was wearing a tank underneath, but it was her favorite Slaughter and The Dogs shirt. It was her big brother's before he left for college.

She sighed and pulled the shirt over her head, handing it to him. He looked at it and then at his shirt and then at his chest, as if her were weighing his options. Shit shirt, strange shirt, bare chest. As he thought, she went to her bike and took the six-pack of Coke she was sent to buy out of the plastic bag, then stashed his soiled shirt inside of it. He still seemed to be knocking his options around.

"Hey," she said again, and he looked up. "Just choose the least offensive option."

He looked at her shirt again before pulling it over his head and taking the plastic bag from her, wiping his face once again.

"I'm Arnez," she said. "Sort of like Dezi."

"What's Dezi?" he said, staring up at her.

"You know," she said. "Dezi Arnaz, from I Love Lucy. My mom wanted to combine Inez and Arnaz, i.e., Arnez."

He didn't respond.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Sheldon Cooper," he said.

"Where do you live, Sheldon Cooper?"

He pointed two streets down and Arnez could see his eyes welling up again.

She went to her bike and wheeled it to him, helping him up. She instructed him to sit on the metal tray above the back wheel and to hold on tightly. With the Coke cans in the front basket and Sheldon on the back, she pushed off and began to pedal. Sheldon yelped over every bump, and as Arnez turned down his road, he clutched onto her shirt.

"Don't fall," he said. "And don't ride in the street. If a car were to hit us, no matter the direction it's headed, I'd be substantially wounded."

"I would be, too," she said, glancing back at him.

A confused wrinkle appeared over his nose.

"That doesn't concern my well-being," he replied flatly.

"Either way, I believe injury comes with the territory of being hit by a car, whether you're on a bike or not. And if a driver is irresponsible enough to hit us in the street, they're probably irresponsible enough to run off the road and hit us on the sidewalk."

She pointed at the curve in the road ahead.

"They'd probably hit us right there."

He made an exasperated, anxious noise and held onto the tray tightly as he pointed at his house. She stopped her bike in his drive way and he hopped down. A woman came to the front door and Arnez smiled at her, waving her hand. The woman smiled back and opened the door for Sheldon as he climbed the steps with his head hung low and the bag at his side.

"Hey, Sheldon Cooper," Arnez said, climbing onto her bike again.

He looked back at her without saying anything.

"I live one street over," she said, pointing in the direction of her house. "Number 2083. If you ever need help, or you want a friend, I'm there."

He didn't respond as he climbed the stairs. The woman smiled again and laid a hand on his shoulder. Arnez felt, without having to hear, that she was thanking her for helping Sheldon.

**A/N: This is a sort of beta test for this story. If you like it, please review and let me know! Hell, if you _don't _like it, please review and tell me off. Thanks for reading!**


	2. The Intelligence Quotient

**A/N: Thanks for coming back! I've changed the point of view from third person focused on Arnez to third person omniscient. I'm hoping it saves time and effort used to acknowledge POV changes. I've never written a story in third person omniscient, though. So if it's no good, tell me! Also, sorry it took so long to write. I forgot that imitating a character with the brain of Dr. Sheldon Cooper will take lots and lots of research. Review, please! ^-^**

"Arnez!" her mother called from downstairs.

Arnez blew out the candles she had lit and snuffed the cone of incense on her dresser, heading down the stairs with her hamburger shoes in hand.

"I presume you need something from somewhere and you want me to get it for you?" she said, pulling her shoes on over her socks.

"No," her mother said. "There's a boy here to see you."

Arnez looked up from her shoes to find Sheldon, the bullied boy, standing in the foyer of her Victorian style house.

"Hey, Sheldon Cooper," she said.

"Hello, Arnez." He said her name funny. His Texan accent was slightly off compared to the others. The difference in accents between Texas and Nevada was the first thing Arnez had noticed. Arnez's mother and father, who still took the demonym "Nevadan" despite dislike for the state, sounded like they belonged in a Western. Texans sounded like they belonged in a country music video. But Sheldon didn't; his accent was very subtle.

"Is it alright if we go upstairs, Mom?" she asked.

Her mother smiled and nodded, glad that Arnez had made a friend since they moved. She knew her daughter was different, and she was relieved when she was introduced to Nora and Charles in Las Vegas. Moving to a new state made her worry for her daughter's late-blooming social life.

Arnez led Sheldon to her room. The music she was listening to was still playing. Sheldon looked around at the room, noticing the residual smell of the incense first. It bothered him. He felt like given enough time, he would have a pounding migraine accompanied by the sticky kind of nausea that only a warm bath and Soft Kitty could cure.

There was a poster of Batman and the Joker on the wall opposite her bed. The Batman comics and movies were a personal favorite of his. His top five favorite comics were as follows:

1) The Flash

2) Green Lantern

3) Batman

4) X-Men

5) Aquaman

The fact they had that in common intrigued him. No one else seemed to have much of an interest in superheroes unless a movie adaptation was in theaters. However, Tim Burton's Batman movie had premiered a year ago exactly; the hype had subsided. So, Sheldon believed she must be a Batman fan. He scrunched his nose. It's very possible that she was a fan of the movie only because it was becoming a movie, and she just hasn't taken down the poster yet, in which case Sheldon didn't want to be friends with her. Movies were positively crawling with inaccuracies and continuity errors. He didn't want to be reminded of these problems during every potential conversation they may have on the subject.

Sheldon had been staring at her Batman poster for several minutes. His intense gaze was making Arnez uncomfortable.

"Do you like Batman?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

He twitched as if the sound of her voice startled him and he glanced at her.

"Batman is my third favorite comic," he said.

"Batman is my first favorite comic, followed by Thor and X-Men."

"Thor?" he said, his blue eyes wide. "In what universe is Thor worthy of a number two spot on a favorite comics list?"

"Hey, man! Thor was not only an Avenger, but he was a founding member of the team. " In the sudden excitement, her own accent became thicker.

"As true as that may be, he was weak and lost focus all because of something so trivial and human as love. It's an overrated emotion. Take my second favorite for example: Green Lantern. Hal didn't let his love for Carol get in the way. His will power was strong and he had no fear, not even of losing her. That made him the strongest of his race, as no other human was without fear. Not to mention, Thor is a god. He should be above such emotions."

His pupils were dilated and his mouth was pulled into a tight smirk. Arnez could tell this was something he had thought over, and was dying to recite to anyone who would care. Although she knew she could have smoked his logic, she couldn't think of indubitable proof that the Mighty Thor was better than Green Lantern.

Besides, she thought, I don't want to ruin his argument while he looks so pleased with himself.

His eyebrows arched up for a second before falling back into their normal positions. He was awaiting a rebuttal.

"Well," she began, pursing her lips. "Batman is still cooler than both of them."

"Oh, I beg to differ," he said, straightening his back.

"Ugh, here we go," she muttered.

"Batman wasn't chosen by fearless intergalactic guardians. Nor could he conjure any object he could imagine simply by willing it to be."

Arnez smiled. Sheldon had made the mistake of going toe-to-toe with her over Batman.

"Batman," she began, "chose himself to fight in the name of justice. He chose to overcome his greatest fear so he could make the city of Gotham – which he practically owned – a better place to live. Sure, he couldn't create a weapon on command, but he used his bottomless pit of money to buy or invent his tools, instead of spending it on vain, material objects. Batman is the best detective in existence. If Sherlock Holmes were to don a cape and cowl, had a photographic memory-"

"Eidetic," Sheldon interjected.

"Yes, an eidetic memory, and a tenacious desire to save every life be it villain or ally, he would be Batman! Extra emphasis on Batman."

Sheldon liked her. He liked the range of her vernacular. He liked that he had just been schooled in the world of Batman, a fact that he would have resented if he weren't so hungry for a like-minded colleague. He liked that he finally had someone he could talk to about his favorite things. Someone who would actually listen and care, unlike his mother, who brushed off his telling of the latest Flash comic with a "That's nice, Shelly," or "Yeah, uh-huh."

Unfortunately, he could only be her friend for the summer. The University of Texas at Austin had just sent him an acceptance letter for the upcoming fall semester. He would be the youngest student attending full-time at only eleven years old. He wanted to tell her, so he did.

"College? Already?" she asked, her jaw agape.

"Well, yes. Arnez, I have an IQ of 187. That's higher than Albert Einstein. When I received that information, it was published in newspapers. It would be preposterous to think universities wouldn't contact me for my presence."

"Multiple universities asked for you?"

"What part of 'I have an IQ of 187' isn't translating for you?" he said, his eyebrows arched and his tone condescending.

Arnez squinted her eyes. She made a habit of squinting whenever she was surprised or upset or whenever an eye-widening situation reared its head. She had been told her big brown eyes were frightening, and were made worse when she opened them all the way.

At this moment, she dismissed his last comment, deciding it was better to forgive and forget rather than to persecute.

"How do you calculate someone's IQ?" she asked in lieu of the sarcastic remark she had planned.

"Well, that's a good question," he began. "There are several tests that can measure one's IQ, such as the Raven's Matrices, which determine one's cognitive capacity to reason."

He reached into his back pocket and took out a pencil and a small notepad. He flipped to the middle of it and began scribbling. Arnez could see the piece of paper he flipped over was filled with mathematical equations she wouldn't come to learn until her junior year of college. Her heart fluttered looking at it. There were more Greek letters than English letters, and more English letters than numbers. He truly was a genius.

He gave the notepad to her and she glanced at what he had drawn. There were three circles split into eight equal parts. In the first circle, to of the parts were shaded in next to each other. In the next, the two parts shaded were on either side of the parts from the first. In the third, they were on either side of the parts shaded in the second.

"Draw what the next circle in the sequence would look like," he said, handing her the pencil.

She looked at the circles again and decided it was easy. So she mimicked the circle and its equal parts, shading in the parts on either side of the parts shaded in the third circle, which happened to be adjacent to the parts shaded in the first circle. She handed it back to him and he glanced at it.

"Correct. Of course, this was a very simple example of the test. Any second grader could have easily solved it."

Arnez rolled her eyes.

"Another test which goes by the name Cattel-Horn-Carroll, suggests that ones IQ can be determined through 70 categories including subjects like reading and writing, decision reaction time and speed, and short-term memory, e.g., if Tim is shorter than John, and Kate is taller than Frank but Frank is not taller than Tim, what can be assumed about John?"

Arnez thought hard. She wasn't prepared for this question, especially at the speed it was said.

"Can you repeat the question?" she asked.

"If I did, it would reduce your score," he said, his mouth in a tight smirk. "So is the time you're consuming to answer."

"You're keeping track?" she said, panic rising in her throat.

"That's not the matter at hand, Arnez. What can be assumed about John?"

She rearranged the question in her head. Tim is shorter than John, and Kate is taller than Frank but Frank is not taller than Tim. That means Tim is shorter than John and Frank, while Kate is the tallest.

"John has a height equal to or lesser than Frank?" Arnez spat.

"Correct," he said without a moment's pause. "Some say a basic set of mathematical skills can help calculate IQ, though that is yet to be proven. Thirty-seven point two percent of two thousand is?"

Arnez thought the simplicity of that question was an insult. She had just finished the fifth grade. She would be a sixth grader next year; a middle schooler! She was above such fodder.

"Seriously?" she said, crossing her arms.

"Absolutely," he replied. "Unless you can't do it. It's my understanding that normal human children have a difficult time deciph-"

"Seven hundred forty-four," she cut in, rolling her eyes.

"Okay, I'll ignore the few seconds it took for you to complain," he said with a calm countenance.

Arnez rolled her eyes. Why did she want to hang out with this kid, again?

Sheldon had an approximate number in his head. He knew that IQ tests were evaluated by computers in order to reduce the chance of error. Computers could spit out a number with a margin of error of 15, which was quite a large margin of error. He was sure, with 93 percent confidence, that he could calculate her IQ with a margin of error of only five points. He ripped out the piece of paper from his notepad and wrote ten more questions for her, including things like sequence completion, spacial perception, and short-term memory evaluation.

He looked at his 1985 Casio calculator watch and waited for the seconds to reach :00, passing the paper to her.

Arnez looked at the paper and used Sheldon's pen to fill out the answers. The number sequence caught her for a moment too long. The question was:

What comes next in this sequence: 1, 9, 33, 105, 327,…

After finding plus two, multiplied by three as the solution, she came to 987 for an answer.

After finishing the rest in a minute and 33 seconds, Arnez handed the paper back to Sheldon. He looked at it and used the pen to write notes.

"I've come to a conclusion," he said, setting down the paper.

"Yes, how's that?"

"Your IQ is between 121 and 131."

"That's a big space between numbers," Arnez said. "Yours is specific."

"You don't know much about statistics, do you?"

Arnez shook her head.

A light jumped about his eyes, happy to find yet another thing he knew that Arnez didn't. He opened his mouth to speak.

"I don't want a lesson, either," she said before he could speak.

The light left in an instant.

"Your IQ is 126."

"Thank you, Sheldon Cooper," she said, a slight lack of enthusiasm.

"It's not 187, of course, but let it be known that the national average as recorded in 1988 was 96. Only one in 24.1 people have an IQ of or higher than 126."

Arnez let that sink in, feeling happier about herself.

"Do you know what mine is? It's one in 300,656,786."

There was the tight smile again; so confident in his superiority.

"Cool," Arnez said sarcastically. "Awesome."

"Isn't it?" Sheldon continued. "Finally, I've found someone who thinks that is as positively astounding as I do. Not unexpected, of course, but certainly astounding."

"Not unexpected?" Arnez said, pursing her lips.

"Arnez, we've just found you have a higher than average IQ. You should comprehend accordingly."

"What, you think you're the absolute monarch of all things?" Arnez squinted and folded her arms.

"Well, I wouldn't say _absolute_ monarch, but seeing as I'm a prodigy, meaning born with an IQ high enough to earn me the title of genius," (Arnez rolled her eyes as if she knew this, but in actuality, she hadn't quite remembered the meaning of that word) "I would say, yes, I am comparable to a king or other monarchial status on all things."

"What's your highest score on Pac-Man?" Arnez spouted.

"35,268,042."

Arnez felt woozy. Her own high score was 543,210. She only remembered because it counted down from five to zero. But she was determined to prove him wrong.

"You get beat up at school. How can you explain that in any other form than your inferiority to their size and strength."

"Oh, Arnez. A malfunctioning pituitary gland doesn't determine one's strength over another. Besides, the children at school are threatened by my admirable intelligence."

Arnez thought about it. His IQ may play into it a little, but she was sure his condescending tone and lack of social skills were the real reasons why he was tormented by the bullies.

She had to find a way to really stump him. Something she knew he couldn't worm his skewed logic into.

Arnez gasped and smiled. She had the perfect solution; a fool-proof answer.

"If a very pretty girl tells you she wants to kiss you," she said, "what do you do?"

"I tell her I have no want or need of kissing her."

"But, she's really pretty. Like Audrey Hepburn in the 60s pretty."

Sheldon stared at her, a vacant look in his eyes.

"Are you gay?" Arnez asked. "You know, it's fine if you are. I'm very supportive of the homosexual community."

"No, I'm not homosexual," he replied. "I simply have no desire to perform any acts of sexuality, be it kissing, which transfers approximately 250 bacteria and viruses, or coitus, which is, as some would say, icky."

Arnez squinted her eyes. The summer was going to be tough with her new friend, but a friend he was. And she was willing to put up with his snarky comments rather than run the summer alone.

"Besides, most individuals of the opposite sex are oblivious to my superiority. I have a theory that I'm above humanity. Perhaps females haven't evolved enough to innately sense my obvious attraction."

She looked at him from head to toe. He was boney, and not incredibly tall. His facial features were uncommon, but not attractive. His hair, though clean, was combed neatly to the side. Something fell out of his pocket and rolled on her bed. She knew what it was before she saw it. A 20-sided die. Surprise, surprise. She wasn't just dealing with your normal, home-grown poindexter. Oh no, this was worthy of it's own subcategory: Supernerd.


End file.
